


Le Roi Est Mort.

by Craftnarok



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, I'm Sorry, M/M, serious awful angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 02:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Craftnarok/pseuds/Craftnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Silver always knew this day was coming, the day when he would choose to save himself and in doing so be the end of Captain Flint. He had told him it would, and he had known it was true. It is finally that day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Roi Est Mort.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what happened. I know I’ve said before, in not so many words, that it’s all about the journey not the destination with these two, but I just had to have one shot at picking at that scab. I couldn’t help myself. It’s probably horribly overbearing and clichéd, but I did it anyway. I’ll go and sit in the corner now and think about what I’ve done. 
> 
> This can be read as a horrible sequel to 'Until death it is all life', as the book I refer to is again Don Quixote, but it also stands alone. The question now is, do I write a sequel to this to fix my own awfulness?

When all was said and done, at least John Silver could tell himself that in this he had been honest. He had lied and tricked and wormed his way through life, but to James Flint he had freely given the truth.

 

_‘I will be the end of you.'_

 

He had told him so and now it was. It ought to be some comfort to the man who knew no guilt, but it gnawed at his insides, plagued his restless dreams, and his stomach turned with every thought that _he_ had done this.

 

_You wrought this. It is of your making._

 

He knew it was true. He had encouraged Flint. Pushed him onwards when he was ready to concede, pulled him up when he had wanted to lie down. Flint had looked for it to end, had _asked_ for it to end, but he had made him fight on; stoked the fires of the devil within him and set him loose upon the world once more. He had thought he was helping, at the time. He knew the truth now. All along he had just wanted to take him for his own, to have some part of him, as he had spent his whole life wanting and taking and having. And he had had him, and owned him, and been owned in return, _and, oh, how it was worth it,_ but he was going to steal that final piece now that he had laid claim to so long ago.

 

_‘…someday you will have no choice but to be my end.’_

 

Nassau was lost, English soil once more, and there was no-one left to fight it. So many were dead; swinging on ropes and rotting in graves and returned to the sea. They were all dead, those who had not turned their backs and become something other in order to save themselves. And he couldn’t blame them, not any more. He had threatened and murdered and terrified, because it was what his Captain needed of him, but now he was saving himself. As he had always known he would in the end. As he always did.

 

 _“It’s over,”_ he had said, the sweat of sex still damp on his skin. _“James, it’s over. The war is lost. We have to stop.”_

 

And Flint had looked at him with those eyes that said he didn’t know how to stop, not anymore. Silver had known it before he had spoken, and he knew what it would mean. In this room, he was just James, who had loved Thomas and Miranda and now loved John; loved them all to ruins. But outside of this place he had forgotten how to be anything other than Captain Flint, the right hand of death and, stranded alone, Flint would likely kill James too. He would be consumed. Silver had condemned him, and he didn’t know how to save him. They were both of them soaked in other people’s blood, reeking of iron and smoke, and drenched in horror, but Silver would not allow himself to drown in it. He must cut the cable that tied him to this anchor.

 

Flint had said nothing, but Silver knew what his silence meant. He would not stop, he could not stop, and he saw that Silver could prop him up no longer but he would not acknowledge it until it was done.

 

 _‘Do it then, if you must. If you can,’_ his eyes seemed to say. _‘Save yourself and let me fall.’_

 

Silver had reached out for him, and dragged him back on top, and kissed him, and held him, and loved him, and begged him to push inside of him again, just to feel it one more time. He wanted to burn the memory of his touch into his body so that he might never forget it. As if he ever could. He would bear the scars of this man forever, and gladly so.

 

Flint had done as he’d asked; covered him and owned him, pushed inside him, and sucked and scratched and bitten bruises into his skin so that he might know who it was who owned his soul. They claimed one another entirely and, at the end, Flint had poured himself into him, crying his name, lost in abandon and begging absolution, knowing it was the last time, knowing it was goodbye. And Silver forgave him and begged forgiveness of his own.

 

When the morning came they dressed in silence, and Silver had decided that it must be done by the day’s end. If he was still here tomorrow then he would be here the day after, and the day after, and he would never be free. And a part of him wanted that; wanted to drown in this awful, vengeful, dangerous, _glorious_ man, and meet his end willingly in the knowledge that it had been done for love. It was how the poets would want it. 

 

But he wouldn’t. He had a choice, where Flint did not. Die with a doomed king or rule as his own. And so he chose life.

 

_The King is dead, long live The King._

***

 

Night had fallen, the deadline had passed, but he had come for one last thing. He paused at the door. He knew the test that awaited him on the other side, knew the form of man he would find there, and his heart climbed into his throat at the thought that it was all about to end. Truly, finally, forever. Here he stood at last.

 

He had always known this moment would be, but it seemed a waking dream now that he was here, standing on its edge and staring into the abyss of what life was left to him. He breathed deeply, his hand on the door, and as he had so willingly plunged himself into darkness for the man on the other side of it, he closed his eyes and leapt again, this time for his own sake.  

 

Flint was sitting on the floor, vulnerable as a child, bottle in hand drained and dripping. And as he looked up, he regarded Silver as a condemned man faced with his executioner, his eyes wide and wet and hurt and begging.

 

_Have you come back to me? Or have I dreamt you?_

 

 _“I came for this.”_ Silver said, tugging the book from the shelf, and sliding it into his coat, close to his heart. And he meant to turn away; to walk out of the room with the staccato metal thump that forever shadowed him and reminded him at every moment of what he had paid in return for this life. But there were green eyes on him, watching, waiting, hoping, and they drew him in as they always had.

 

He found himself in front of him before he knew his body was betraying him and, as Silver knelt down on his lost leg, Flint’s hands flew to his shirt front, twisting it and trapping him, an echo of the towering threats of old. But he was a drowning man now, reaching out and clinging to the very last hope of life, desperate for one final taste of the sea air, knowing that all was already lost. Silver raised his own hands to cover Flint’s and he pried them away from his shirt, gentle but firm, as he was in all things with this man, but he found he could not let go. Not yet. So his grasp lingered and he twined their fingers together, tight and painful and not nearly close enough. It hurt to breathe and he looked into those eyes that had carved bleeding wounds into his soul and he knew he had to inhale him one last time.

 

_Just one more time._

 

So he leant forward, and their lips touched, and Flint was a starving man offered the bread of life. His knuckles popped under the strain of their entrapment, but he could only lean closer and kiss harder and will the words _‘goodbye, my love’_ to pass his lips unspoken. But he was biting too, and Flint bit back and, _god, he was so angry_ _with him_ , with himself, with the world, and he wanted to tear into him and eat him alive. Swallow him whole as Flint had swallowed him. There was a sob in his throat at the base of his tongue, clawing its way out, but he strangled it cruelly, squeezed the life from it, and dug his nails into the hands in his, cutting an epitaph into his skin.

 

_Fuck you for making me love you._

_God, how I despise you for it,_

_And how I want you still._

_You have ruined me,_

_And I will love you unto death._

 

But then Flint’s hand was in his hair, cloying and wanting, and he pulled back, disentangling himself and ripping his still-beating heart from his chest. His eyes were wet and hot but the tears stuck to his lashes and they did not fall. There was no room here for softness. The time had passed and all was done. And as he looked down on a broken man who had tilted at windmills and lost, he hardened what little scraps remained of his heart and he stood and he walked away without looking back. He could not look back.

 

***

 

Later, as the sea bore him away, he reached for the book and he opened it up to the very first page, his fingers touching the fading ink, caressing the words that were all he had left.

 

‘ _My Sancho,_

 

_“Hope is always born_

_at the same time as love.”_

_J.’_

And finally he wept.


End file.
